School Transition program for Autism and Related Disorders: STAR

Starting school is a major transition for children and their families. It is a period of change that can be both challenging and exciting.

Children with ASD often have significant difficulties with transition. In order to make the transition to school as smooth as possible, careful planning must occur.

This program assist the children with ASD to have a smooth transition to the school.

The main areas of development include

Self-regulation-

When the child learns to:

✓ Become more aware of his own actions, thoughts and feelings

✓ Take control of his behaviour, thinking and emotions – they don’t rule him!

✓ Adapt and manage his behaviour, thinking and emotions so he can decide how, when and where he’ll express himself

✓ Use his abilities more flexibly and consider alternatives

Improved self—regulation skills can produce:

✓ Stronger interest and enjoyment in learning

✓ Stronger self-belief and sense of competence

✓ Less stress and anxiety for both the child and adults around him

✓ Reduced need for constant vigilance by the adults

✓ Less need for adult direction, close supervision and intervention

Self-monitoring

Self-monitoring is a process where a child monitors, manages, records, and assesses their own behaviour to promote self-regulation, independence, maintenance, and generalization.

Self-monitoring can be used to help children

✓ To stay on-task

✓ Decrease stereotypic or repetitive behaviours

✓ Increase social interaction, reduce behaviour problems

✓ Improve academic performance in school

Pre academic skills

A child is ready to learn academics once he has attained the core pre-academic skills. Even before going to school, typical children learn a lot from their surroundings, by observation and as natural part of growing up. For children with autism the teaching process starts a step before. Children with autism do not naturally develop skills required for learning. They need to ‘learn how to learn’. Learning happens when the child is able to attend to a task and sit for some amount of time with a teacher. Before starting with academic teaching, it is important to work on building the core skills required for learning. Some of these pre-academic skills are-

✓ Attending

✓ Sitting behaviour

✓ Developing eye contact

✓ Following basic instructions

✓ Turn taking and waiting

Play and social skills.

Social skills will help your child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) know how to act in different social situations – from talking to her grandparents when they visit to playing with friends at school. Social skills can help child to make friends, learn from others and develop hobbiesand interests. They can also help with family relationships and give your child a sense of belonging.

The children are trained in mock classroom settings and this program is facilitated by a multidisciplinary team of speech pathologist, school educator and psychologist.